They thrust the olive stick into the fire until, green as it was, it was ready to burst into flame and they thrust it into the monster's eye, for he had but one eye set in the middle of his great forehead, and made him sightless.
Then the Cyclops leaped up and bore away the stake and cried aloud so that all the Cyclopes who lived on the mountain side heard him and came down, crowding about the entrance to his cave. The Cyclops rolled away the great stone from the door of the cave and came out in the midst of the other giants stretching out his hands to try and gather his sheep together. And Ulysses wondered how he and his men would be able to escape.
At last he lighted on a good device. The Cyclops had driven the rams with the other ship into the cave and they were huge and strong. Ulysses fastened his comrades underneath the rams, tying them with osier twigs of which the giant made his bed. There was one mighty ram, far larger than all the others, and to this Ulysses clung, grasping the fleece tight with both hands. So they waited in the recesses of the cave for morning. And when the morning came, the rams rushed out to pasture as the giant sat in the door, feeling the back of each as it went by, but never touching the man who was bound underneath each. With them Ulysses escaped.
When they were out of reach of the giant, Ulysses loosed his hold of the rams and then unbound his comrades. They hastened to their ship, climbed in, and smote the sea with their oars, laying to right lustily that they might the sooner escape from this accursed land. But when they had rowed a hundred yards or so, the Cyclops heard them. He broke off the top of a great hill, a mighty rock, and hurled it where he heard the sound of the oars. It fell right in front of the ship's bow and washed the ship back to the shore again. But Ulysses seized a long pole with both hands and pushed the ship from the land and bade his comrades ply their oars softly, nodding with his head, for he was too wise to speak, lest the Cyclops should know where they were. Then they rowed with all their might and main.
They had gone twice as far as before, when Ulysses' pride became so great that he could no longer contain himself. He stood up in the boat and called out.
"Hear, Cyclops. If any man asks who destroyed your power for evil, say it was the warrior Ulysses, dwelling in Ithaca."
The giant heard and he lifted up his hands and spoke to Neptune, the god of the sea, who was the father of the Cyclopes. "Hear me, Neptune, if I am indeed your son and you are my father. May this Ulysses never reach his home; or, if the Fates have ordered that he shall reach it, may he come alone, with all his comrades lost."
And as the Cyclops ended this wicked prayer, he hurled another mighty rock which almost lighted on the rudder's end, yet missed it as if by a hair's breadth. So Ulysses escaped and all his comrades with him, and they came to the island of the wild goats where they found the rest of their men who had waited long for them in sore fear lest they had perished. And they went home in triumph to Greece.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] Copyright Doubleday, Page and Co.